Governments: Home of Atrocities

This story is six years old, but it bears repeating. Many people trust their government despite the never-ending atrocities. When we fail to question authority, we set ourselves up for disappointment, or even disaster. This is one of those stories – it’s also slightly longer than my usual blog.

Filmed over seven years, the documentary “Belly of the Beast” exposes fairly recent state-sanctioned forced/coerced/unknown sterilizations in California prisons. It based on Kelli Dillon, who was unknowingly sterilized while incarcerated at a Central California women’s facility, and her lawyer, Cynthia Chandler.

While in prison, she was told she needed surgery to treat an ovarian cyst, Dillon, unknowingly, underwent a hysterectomy in 2001 during the surgery, at the age of 24. She was unaware of the procedure until her lawyer – not the doctors who treated her – informed her that she could never have children again.

In 2006, Dillon became the first survivor to sue the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for damages. She lost the battle, but not the war. The Center for Investigative Reporting (now Reveal) reported that between 2006 and 2010, at least 148 pregnant women received tubal ligation shortly after giving birth while incarcerated at two California prisons. The majority of the women were Black or Latina, and staff targeted people deemed likely to be incarcerated again.

According to state audits and prison records, nearly 1,400 sterilizations via force, coercion, or complete secrecy, were performed between 1997 and 2013. The investigation also found records of payments to doctors contracting with the prison. Despite federal and state law prohibiting the use of federal funds for birth control sterilizations in prisons, California used its own funds to pay doctors a total of almost $150,000.

Why was all of this done? As I always say, follow the money. According to those who support such atrocities, including doctors, “the amount spent on sterilization pales in comparison to what you save in welfare.” Remember, this is liberal California which claims to defend women’s rights.

Correctly, California banned coerced sterilizations as means of birth control in prisons in 2014, driven in part by Dillon’s testimony. While the bill passed unanimously, its carefully worded language allowed the state to escape any responsibility. According to Chandler, “[The state’s] position was that they didn’t want to admit anything or apologize for any wrongdoing or have any real culpability.”

At the turn of the 20th century, eugenics movements captivated much of white America, fueled by a zealous faith that by controlling genetics, we could socially engineer away America’s “ills”, including poverty, crime and “feeblemindedness”. Thirty-two states had sterilization laws, and such laws set the example for Nazi Germany to copy.

From 1909 to 1979, under the state eugenics laws, California forcibly sterilized about 20,000 people in state institutions who were deemed “unfit to produce”. The program disproportionately targeted Latinos, women, people with disabilities, and even those who had children out of wedlock. The mean age of victims was just 17, and included children as young as 12. Again, they used cost evaluations as an excuse to do so. When that was frowned upon, the eugenics movement… moved to prisons, where it was much easier to hide.

Other contemporary sterilizations (coerced, forced, or unknown), such as those that happened to the indigenous population in the 1970’s, are stark proof of governments playing God. There are still people with disabilities who are being involuntarily sterilized under the guise of informed consent, where parents are given an opportunity to sterilize their disabled children before they’re even adults.

As of 2022, forced sterilizations were permitted in 31 states. Most allegedly address the mentally ill and incompetent. However, it’s almost impossible to know how many may be performed without the victim’s knowledge, mentally disturbed or otherwise.

But hey, trust your government. Sorry, NEVER!

Source used: PBS